NANA DEDE & GALLERY WATATU

Peerless Pedigree
Nana Dede – African Art Consulting & Investment is the sole agent of Gallery Watatu, Nairobi.

Watatu has a peerless pedigree as a premier professional gallery in East Africa promoting contemporary African art. It was founded in Nairobi in 1968 by afro-nomads cum artists, Jony Waite, Robin Anderson and David Hart. Today, Gallery Watatu – kiSwahili meaning “three people” – is the reference for collectors, investors, museums, galleries and publishers of works of contemporary African paintings and sculptures.

“We simply wanted to create a space that would respect emerging artists and show their work in the best possible way. Watatu (39 years on) is still the heart and soul of the best art in East Africa”, says founding mother Waite, who left with Anderson and Hart in the early eighties to concentrate on making, and not managing, art!

Gallery Watatu was acquired in 1984 by American-born Ruth Schaffner and Ivoirian husband Adama Diawara, veteran Africana collectors who had galleries in Santa Barbara and Tokyo. They took the gallery to new heights, literally, locating it on the mezzanine floor of the prestigious Lonrho Africa House, an ultramodern highrise on Standard Street, downtown Nairobi.

Thanks to the discerning eye of Schaffner and Diawara, Gallery Watatu is home to the largest collection of originals of Tanzanian E S Tingatinga, founder of the international art movement, “Tingatinga”. The gallery also has an important collection of Lilanga, the Makonde-inspired vibrant art form of the Dar es Salaam School. There is an impressive cache of Senoufo, Dioula, Gouro, Baule, Bambara, Dan, and Chokwe masks, relics and other artifacts.

New Kids on the Block
Uganda-born Jak Katarikawe remains the most internationally acclaimed and best-selling contemporary artist at the gallery. However, old hands like Timothy Brooke, Kivuthi Mbuno, Zacharia Mbutha, Elijah Ooko, Joel Oswaggo, Charles Sekano, Kamal Shah, Wanyu Brush, Mary Naita, Ancen Soi and Jony Waite have had a tremendous impact over the decades. There are some
160 African and afro-nomad (Africa-adopted Europeans) painters and sculptors showcasing through Gallery Watatu.

The gallery announces the arrival on the regional art scene of newcomers Lonad, Erick Shitawah, Meek Gichugu, Joseph Kartoon, Sekajugo and Yassir Ali. They are young, fresh, irreverent and thoroughly brilliant! Gallery Watatu is poised, yet again, for an exciting new phase.